Journal #1(TOD: 7:30 am) 10/19/08:
Free:

  • 9 foot grass that was visiable, grew under the water and then sprouted up out of the water
  • water is murky and smells pretty bad
  • There is lots of plants, trees, srubs, and marine life
  • Guppies at the shoreline, don't know if there is marine life in the depper end
  • Calm, breezy, peaceful
Kawainui marsh would be a good place to see evolution and do the expiriment here because marsh lands can change drasticly with a little rain or a lot. Hopefully I get to see the way birds can adapt to their envionment and other species and see how the animals of these niches get along with each other.

Assigned:

  • Shoreline areas where small fishes live andother bugs on land
  • Shoreline plants small and not invasive
  • Deep water area where bigger fish can live along with other various marine life
  • Brush and srubs on marsh islands where insests, birds, mongoose, and fish can use the roots as shelter
  • Tall trees/grass (10-15ft) where birds can rest and maybe bigger insests
No obvious predator-prey relationship but I could assume some. Birds and tiny insects, mongoose and bird eggs, big fish and small fish, birds and small fish. I still have to see if these are truly right.

Journal #2(TOD: 7:30 am) 10/19/08:
Free:
Abiotic:

  • Soil tempature: 25°C
  • Water tempature: 26°C
  • Water smells bad
  • Water is murky, kind lof like brakish water
  • Split currents
  • Moist within 2 ft of shoreline
  • Soil has lots of gravel mixed in with mud and small rocks
  • Water rocks have fossoilized shells in them and contain other various types of shells that are freely floating around in the water
  • Does the water always look like it is brakish water? Time, day, and weather could change this.
  • Is the water at Kawainui Marsh always drasticly changed over a small time period? When I went back 5 hours later the water level dropped 5-10 inches.
  • Is the soil completely moist so that the roots of the plants don't need constaint supply of the Kawainui Marsh water? Does it stay moist long enough so it does not dry out before the water rises again?

Assigned:

  • Some different predator-prey relationships are mongoose and birds. There where tons of birds and mongoose. The things mongoose eats are a variety of land animals but the one that stands out the most are bird eggs. Mongoose love to eat bird eggs and that is how most of our Hawaiian birds became extinct. I don’t like mongoose that much but I noticed that they had to somehow get the eggs from the bird. I did not have enough time to see what would happen but I would imagine that over a period of time the birds started to adapt to the mongoose so they started to build nest in trees but mongoose had to adapt to that so they would eventually evolve to get eggs in trees or eat other animals.
  • I couldn’t really see other relationships but I saw one thing that could be invasive. The grass that was growing 9 feet above sea level was covering most of the whole Kawainui Marsh. It was pretty amazing but also destructive. It allowed almost no plants to grow between it because it was so tight and compacted together.


Journal #3(TOD: 7:30 a.m.) 11/2/08

Free:
Abiotic:
Soil:
  • pH: 6.5 little but acidic
  • Nitrogen: very low
  • Phosphorous: High
  • Potash: High
Water:
  • pH: 7.3 neutral
Water temp: 22°C
Soil temp: 23°C
Air temp: 25°C
calm breezy, east-west

If we have coral from Kawainui Marsh then tap water will turn redish-brown. ›soil›grass and roots
If the rain water is higher than the pond water will go up.
If the plant from KM grows in potting soil then they will grow better.

When I threw rocks in the KM water to create bubbles it didn't pop. I just floated in a westward current.

Final question is Where in the KM is the water most acidic???
Hypothesis: If water taken from 4 different parts of the marsh is tested, then the water upstream is more acidic than the water downstream.
Conclusion: After my experiments i found out that the water from up-stream was acidic compared to all of the other sites. After doing research i found out the water lettuce or Pistia Stratiotes was and aquatic plant that floats with the current. It had dangling roiots that just dangled in the water freely. The site where this water lettuce was only 1 and a half mile away. our group site was still not yet taken over so there were still some places where you could see water. Acidity maybe due to vegitation giving off CO2 into the water and setalment from heavy rain.